Systems for providing position information are known in the art. For example, radio-based systems such as LORAN, GPS, GLONASS, and the like have been used to provide position information for persons, vehicles, equipment, and the like. These systems do, however, have limitations associated with factors such as location accuracy, transmitted and received signal levels, radio channel interference and/or channel problems such as multipath, device power consumption, and the like.
Determination of a mobile subscriber's exact location can be quite challenging. If the subscriber is indoors or in an urban area with obstructions, the subscriber's mobile device may not be able to receive signals from GPS satellites and the network may be forced to rely on network-based triangulation/multilateration methods that are less precise. Additionally, if the subscriber is in a multi-story building, knowing only that the subscriber is in the building and not what floor they are on, will result in delays in providing emergency assistance (which could be potentially life-threatening). Clearly, a system that can assist the subscriber's computing device (e.g., a mobile computing device) in speeding up the location determination process, provide more accuracy (including vertical information), and solve some of the challenges of location determination in urban areas and inside buildings is needed.
Moreover, position information transmitted in systems like GPS is readily available to various devices without any option to regulate which device may have access to the position information, or more particularly, which software application on the device may use the position information. Such lack of regulation may place bandwidth burdens on network operators where many applications across many devices are transmitting position information through the network to third party services that are associated with those applications. Having an ability to regulate use of position information would further allow network operators to maintain better levels of service for its customers while reducing unnecessary bandwidth use. Moreover, providing greater control to network operators would permit per monetization at the application level or service level for each user device or each user of a user device.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved positioning systems to address these and/or other problems with existing positioning systems and devices.